Using ChatGPT to write AppleScript

I found a killer application for ChatGPT today: writing AppleScript!

I've been stubbornly refusing to learn AppleScript for nearly twenty years at this point. Thanks to ChatGPT I can continue not to learn it, but I can now use it to solve problems.

I wanted to figure out how to export the content of my Apple Notes notes. Here are some edited highlights from my conversation with ChatGPT:

Me:

Write applescript to loop through all of my Apple Notes and output their contents

ChatGPT:

tell application "Notes"
   repeat with eachNote in every note
      set noteTitle to the name of eachNote
      set noteBody to the body of eachNote
      display dialog noteTitle & return & return & noteBody
   end repeat
end tell

Me:

How can I turn that into a zsh script which will output the results to my terminal

ChatGPT:

#!/usr/bin/zsh

osascript -e 'tell application "Notes"
   repeat with eachNote in every note
      set noteTitle to the name of eachNote
      set noteBody to the body of eachNote
      set output to noteTitle & "\n" & noteBody & "\n"
      display dialog output
      log output
   end repeat
end tell'

I had to change that first line to #!/bin/zsh - then when I ran it it spammed my screen with dialog boxes.

Me:

I want to log the notes contents to the terminal, not display it in a dialog

ChatGPT:

#!/bin/zsh

osascript -e 'tell application "Notes"
   repeat with eachNote in every note
      set noteTitle to the name of eachNote
      set noteBody to the body of eachNote
      set output to noteTitle & "\n" & noteBody & "\n"
      log output
   end repeat
end tell'

I ended up using what I learned here to build apple-notes-to-sqlite, a new Python tool which wraps osascript under the hood and uses it to export my Apple Notes data to a SQLite database.

Created 2023-03-08T21:41:07-08:00 · Edit

Using ChatGPT to write AppleScript

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